Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
The upshot of this is that few biotech companies in the environmental sector
perceive problems for their own business development models, principally as
a result of the wide range of businesses for which their services are applicable
and the large potential for growth. Competition within the sector is not seen as a
major issue either, since the field is still largely open and unsaturated, and from
the employment perspective, the biotech industry seems a robust one. Although
the economic downturn saw the UK science labour market in general shed both
permanent and contract staff throughout 2009, the biotech sector increased its
demand for skilled scientists and predictions suggest that it will continue to buck
the trend in the future (SRG, 2010). Moreover, there has been an established
tendency towards niche specificity, with companies operating in more specialised
sub-arenas within the environmental biotechnology umbrella. Given the number
and diversity of such possible slots, coupled with the fact that new opportunities,
and the technologies to capitalise on them, are developing apace, this trend seems
likely to continue, though the business landscape is beginning to change. In some
sectors, aggressive rivalry for market penetration has begun to produce bigger,
multi-disciplinary environmental companies, largely through partnerships, acqui-
sitions and direct competition. It is not without some irony that companies basing
their commercial activities on biological organisms should themselves come to
behave in such a Darwinian fashion. However, the picture is not entirely rosy.
Typically the sector comprises a number of relatively small, specialist
companies. According to the
OECD Biotechnology Statistics 2009
,basedon
government survey data for 22 OECD countries and an additional four non-
member countries, the majority of both biotechnology and biotechnology
R&D companies have fewer than 50 employees - the average by country
being 67 and 63% respectively (van Beuzekom and Arundel, 2009). As
a consequence, the market has tended to be somewhat fragmented. Often
the complexities of individual projects make the application of 'standard'
off-the-shelf approaches very difficult, inevitably meaning that much of what is
done must be significantly customised. While this, of course, is a strength and of
great potential environmental benefit, it also has hard commercial implications
which must be taken into account. Although the situation has begun to be
addressed over recent years, historically a sizeable proportion of companies
active in this sphere have had few products or services which might reasonably
be termed suitable for generalised use, though they may have enough expertise,
experience or sufficiently perfected techniques to deal with a large number of
possible scenarios.
Historically, one of the major barriers to the wider uptake of biological
approaches has been the high perceived cost of these applications. For many
years, the solutions to all environmental problems were seen as expensive
and for some, particularly those unfamiliar with the multiplicity of varied
technologies available, this view has been slow to fade. Generally, there is often
a lack of financial resource allocation available for this kind of work and biotech
providers have sometimes come under pressure to reduce the prices for their
services as a result. Awareness of the benefits of biotechnology, both as a means
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